When Dani Richter, aka Inde Ella, the lead singer and acoustic guitar player for Cottonwood-based band Muddy Rabbit, heard about the NPR Tiny Desk Contest, there was only one week left before submissions closed.
“I got together the band and I was like, ‘hey, guys, can we find any time to practice?’” Richter said. “We almost couldn’t make it work because our bass player had some class projects coming up. But he was able to get some stuff done for them. We got together and recorded it all in one night.”
The nation’s largest public radio station sets up a weekly concert with an artist or band in Washington, D.C., that NPR livestreams on its YouTube page and airs on various programs through the week.
The contest is a separate, judged competition, where the judges will go through the entries and pick out their favorites.
The 50 songs chosen will go to the Top Shelf Series, which streams an episode a week, according to NPR.
This year, there were more than 6,000 entries.
To submit, the band needed to record an original song, and include a video of them playing, per the contest rules.
“I think anyone can submit, you just have to have a desk in the video,” Richter said.
The live stream of Muddy Rabbit’s song “Whiskey Road” will be the second episode in the Top Shelf Series for 2026 and will air on Thursday, April 2, at noon Arizona time at youtube.com/live/16ADUVhsTFY?si=lflQQzLvjMAEdhTW.
“The whole thing feels pretty surreal to us,” Richter said. “We’re really, really excited about it. We love NPR’s Tiny Desk. We’ve watched a lot of their videos and definitely taken inspiration from them. In the 50s, it’s pretty big for us. We’re really excited about it and excited to share and hopefully make people proud around here.”
Muddy Rabbit
The band members are Richter; her husband, Randy, on lead guitar; Josiah Gamble on drums and vocals; and Phil Cowan on bass guitar. Cowan is the newest player, performing with the group for a few months.
“I’ve been playing in bands for like 22 years,” Cowan said. “It’s really nice to find a group that you get along with, that is talented, and that people like, and that you get to play stuff that you enjoy playing.”
The group finds inspiration in a lot of “older” bands, Richter said, like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Traveling Wilburys.
“The whole
thing feels pretty
surreal to us.
… We’re really
excited about it
and excited to
share and hope
fully make people
proud around
here.”
Dani Richter,
aka Inde Ella
Lead Singer of Muddy Rabbit
“I always have trouble describing it to people,” Richter said. “I don’t have an outside perspective, but I would say maybe indie rock, some soul in there. We love Americana, too. It’s a really big inspiration for us.”
She streams on her YouTube channel, @indeella, where the Tiny Desk submission is posted. The band’s YouTube channel is @MuddyRabbitbandofficial.
The 10-year-old band has found it a little difficult to find time to practice in recent months, because of the Richters’ 18-month-old baby, so its practices have mostly been just the gigs.
Dani Richter said those practices happen a few times a month, which is enough considering the members have been playing together for so long.
“This is therapy for me,” Gamble said. “… It gets me out of my head and puts a smile on my face.”
Most recently, the group played at the Spirit Room in Jerome on Sunday, March 22, and has events planned for the Sip! Wine and Music Experience at DA Ranch from Friday to Sunday, April 24 through 26, and the Verde Valley Wine Festival on Saturday, May 9.
Recording
The contest winner is chosen to go to NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., to play in the Tiny Desk studio. The individual submissions, though, were recorded wherever the band could find a space.
“We actually had a very weird setup, because we didn’t have an interface at the time that was able to pick up all of our instruments individually,” she said. “We had to record my vocals on the one channel and then everything else into the other. So it took us a long time to get the levels, because we had to record and then go listen back and record and then go back. … And there was no adjusting after we recorded.”
The band has enough material for an original album, Richter said, and is working to polish and record more original songs.
“We did it in 45 minutes, maybe an hour, three takes,” Randy Richter said.
He said it was the band’s first time recording a song at all.
“It’s kind of new for us to put things out on the internet,” she said.
Sometimes, the band will livestream an event — and she does solo livestreams fairly often — but mostly, they just play the originals live at venues around the Verde Valley.
“We are borrowing from the [Tiny Desk video] interface so that we can record the other videos for our channel,” she said.
Muddy Rabbit decided to submit its song “Whiskey Road,” because they knew they could play it in time.
“I wrote it in 2020 during the pandemic,” Richter said. “Then I actually just recently finished it. I guess I’ve been playing it unfinished for a very long time.”
